As personal computers and access to the Internet have become increasingly common, computers have become more widely relied upon for communication. Businesses provide product information, customer support, and ordering capability via the Internet, e-mail is widely used for personal and business communication via the Internet in place of telephone or postal mail, and discussions relating to a wide variety of specific topics are conducted in Internet-based discussion groups. As technology and access to the Internet continue to increase, it is reasonable to expect that communication via the Internet will continue to increase in popularity and the methods in which the Internet is used to communicate will continue to expand.
Web pages or websites comprising a part of the World Wide Web (WWW) are perhaps the most common means of posting information for mass viewing or for providing services such as e-commerce ability to the public at large. Web pages are defined via a markup language that can be transmitted via the Internet to website users, who run web browser applications that interpret the markup language information and render web pages on the user computer systems. Markup languages such as HTML allow presentation of text, graphics, menus, tables, and other useful structures to users via the Internet connections that link web page servers and user client systems running web browser applications. One common feature incorporated into web pages is known as a “Hyperlink”, which is typically text or a graphic representing other content, that when clicked on using a mouse cursor or otherwise selected loads and presents the represented other content.
But, as bandwidth and computational power in computerized systems continue to increase, the types of information presented via the World Wide Web and other sources continues to advance. Now, it is not uncommon to find relatively large and complex streaming audio or video broadcasts of content in addition to more traditional text and still image content, and such content continues to become more common. However, content such as video has typically been presented as a stand-alone presentation, without incorporating links to other content.
The concept of Hypervideo seeks to provide this hyperlink-type functionality to video presentations, enabling linking and retrieval of information related to objects or images presented in a video presentation. For example, a user watching a football game may move a cursor over a player and click on the player's image to see statistics on that player, or may similarly select a product in a commercial or television show for more information on the product.
Hypervideo capability is currently provided via a proprietary hypervideo software system called Hypervideo Suite. This software provides a multimedia designer the tools to create video with hyperlinks, such as may be viewable over the Internet or other broadband network using a hypervideo player or other media viewer. Incorporation of hyperlinks into video using Hypervideo Suite technology is hoped to become the preferred method of providing hyperlinks in video content as broadband network access becomes commonplace.
But, along with tools to facilitate providing hypervideo content, it is desirable to track the use of such content. Because such content remains relatively expensive to produce and distribute, evaluation of commercial effectiveness of hypervideo content for various applications is key to cost-effective or profitable use of hypevideo. Tracking use of content can serve a variety of other functions, such as tracking progress of training or educational material. While web servers often provide statistics on the number of times selected elements have been downloaded and other such information, they do not track a user's progress through a series of links where the links include clicking through hotspots or links in video, or provide other information key to understanding how content is used.
What is needed is a system that is capable of tracking and reporting user behavior in a Hypervideo system.